IMAGINE being able to see colours when listening to music, or have a taste sensation when looking at a colour? For most people the concept just seems bizarre but, for a small number of people it is an everyday fact of life.

Prestatyn woman Julia Hobbs is one of them – she has a condition called synaesthesia which affects around one in 250,000 people.

Synaesthetics senses are best described as “cross-wired” and the most common form is when people see or hear words in colour.

It has been known about for more than 200 years and extensive research was conducted into it in the 19th and early 20th century.

More recently interest has been rekindled, especially since the publication of a study into synaesthesia by the American neurologist Richard Cytowic.

For Julia, a healthcare adviser with a national charity, she didn’t realise that her senses were a little different from the norm until well into her teenage years.

She said: “I first discovered I had the condition when I heard a radio programme about this thing called synaesthesia. I just thought oh, everybody does that. I mentioned it to my mother and she thought the same, as did her mother who also had it.”

Only afterwards did she realise that not everyone can taste the colour pink.

“I can taste certain colours, when I see a strong pink I get a real fruity berry, fruits of the forest taste in my mouth, whereas fawn colours invoke a cloying, talcum powder cake taste.”

Music, especially classical, also stimulates her senses in the strangest of ways.

“I can’t listen to some music such as Elgar or Wagner as I get black, bleak images of hollowed out eyes – it’s very grim.

But, fortunately other music takes her too a different place entirely.

“When I hear Vaughan William’s Lark Ascending, it should be a bird I see but, instead I picture really fluffy lambs – a sweet perspective. I should probably not say this but I also get a strong taste of mint sauce.”

Words also invoke images and for a woman who works in healthcare, it can sometimes be distracting: “Cancer to me sounds like a bee hive and I visualise coral and stroke looks grey and sounds like squelching through mud.”

But, in the main synaesthesia has been a positive force in her life.

She’s an artist in her spare time and a jewellery designer and the condition very much influences her work.

“I’ve never seen it as a problem, it’s just something that has always been there.”